Rise of American High School Sports and the Search for Control

Nearly half of all American high school students participate in sports teams. With a total of 7.6 million participants as of 2008, this makes the high school sports program in America the largest organized sports program in the world. Pruter’s work traces the history of high school sports from the student-led athletic clubs of the 1800s through to the establishment of educator control of high school sports under a national federation by the 1930s. Pruter’s research serves not only to highlight this rich history but also to provide new perspectives on how high school sports became the arena by which Americans fought for some of the most contentious issues in society, such as race, immigration and Americanization, gender roles, religious conflict, the role of the military in democracy, and the commercial exploitation of our youth.